Probably not the best week for traveling

Accu-WeatherA low pressure system currently building over the Southeast is expected to head up into our neighborhood today, bringing an end to the nice weather we experienced over the weekend. This low isn't likely to develop into a major storm, by any means, but we should see about a half an inch of rain from it, mostly after 5 p.m. this evening into the overnight.

The most noticeable change will be in the temperatures, as the counterclockwise flow around the low will pump in cooler air from out of the northeast. Our forecast high temperature for today is only 50, although that's just about normal for the date.

Temps will likely warm back up into the mid- to upper 50s by midweek, including for Thanksgiving, but a pattern change is in the offing after that, with a shift back to colder, if seasonal, temperatures.

This, of course, is the heaviest travel week of the year given the holiday, and as the above graphic indicates, weather conditions are expected to go downhill toward the latter half of the holiday weekend for us here in the New York metro area --- nothing extreme, necessarily, but our string of gentle weather had to end at some point.

Gotten all your ingredients for the big feast yet? If not, you could possibly have a hard time finding that canned pumpkin for your pumpkin pie.

Virtually all of this country's canned pumpkin comes from Nestle, which owns the Libby's brand, and nearly all of Libby's canned pumpkin product is grown on one farm in Morton, Ill. Heavy rains besieged that part of Illinois in September and October, making it difficult to harvest the pumpkins in the fields. Personally, I was planning on baking a cake for this Thanksgiving, so no worries.

Yesterday's extreme temperatures in the contiguous United States --- High: 84 at Kendall, Fla.; Low: 1 at Stanley, Idaho. The moon is currently a waxing crescent, 34 percent illuminated. Today's record high and low temperatures in Central Park are 72 in 1931 and 14 in 1880.